To Fail and Survive
by warriorformerlyknownasprince
Summary: Vegeta reflects on the irony of his current situation.


Earth. Tiny little blue planet peppered with green and white patches.

_Unimpressive_, had been his first thought as he first looked at it from his pod's round portal with its thick, distorting glass. It looked comfortably habitable, though not particularly exciting.

He would have never guessed this quiet place could ruin him. To think he would be shattered here, left to pick up the pieces of the man formerly known as prince.

The rain drummed its wet fingers on the window panes and Vegeta lay sleepless in his bed listening. It had been a long time since the sound of raindrops sizzled rhythmically in the background of his late-night musings. There was no weather in space, and war was in the fields where ever Frieza's troops landed. Rain was a peaceful sound made for reflective nights and lazy Sunday mornings. It felt surreal to listen to it now, especially lying in a king-size bed in the guest room of a lavish mansion, smelling of soap and citrus and mint.

There was a time when he was a foot-soldier shivering on a cot in the barracks. One wouldn't call it sleep. He would close his eyes, straining his ears for threats or creeps. Jolting upright, he would realize he managed to sleep, if only a few minutes or hours-it was hard to tell the difference. Those years as a low-ranking officer were impactful, a constant state of mistrust and stress caused neurosis so deep that decades later, he still experienced those jolting moments of anxiety triggered by anything, everything.

Of course, he was a brilliant strategist and with some work, he became a highly skilled and respected warrior, despite his physique, which was fine-boned and thin, even handsome when he had all his hair. His appearance, he reckoned, was an advantage in that it invited opponents to sorely underestimate him. But he was dangerous, and a meanness grew in him like a festering abscess. Every year, every day, he was less decent, less merciful. Anger consumed him, sustained him, drove him, left him an impossible mixture of exhausted and emboldened with its energy. With prestigious titles came nicer accommodations, a salary, possessions. He partied. He drank. He laughed, both genuinely and in cruelty. He desperately tried to hold on to some semblance of his true identity, but it was lost somewhere in that rubble that orbited aimlessly the sun called Atacai XII.

He rose in to the highest ranks, leaving behind his naïve delusions of rebellion and friendship and love. The choice was between two absolutes, as it had to be in war: fealty or death, good or evil, power or powerlessness. He bent the knee, swallowing the shame and constructing a fantastic bravado, a theatrical sense of self that hid well the broken child he really was. He couldn't see it then, he was crazed. Still crazed, he supposed, but now, in this ridiculous bed, alone and silent, it was difficult to avoid reflection.

He should have died. It had been in the back of his mind, the futility of his final play. He had tried to convince himself of the victory, and during the highest highs of his mania, he had truly believed he could defeat the demon, usurp the usurper. If he could have written his own story, if he had had any real control, he would have written it like that. In his core of cores, however, he had known that Frieza would end him. It had been a relief to think it could be over, the thought was almost as pleasing as the chaos he had ignited in Frieza's ranks before he'd been had.

But to both fail and survive? He had not fathomed such humiliating torture.

The humans had saved him, though not intentionally, he realized. He didn't want saving, and he abhorred their confused, pitying stares. A prince, he'd told them, as he told everyone reflexively, perhaps defensively. He saw the doubt in their eyes. To them he was Don Quijote; a man whose delusions of grandeur fed a hopelessly inflated sense of self even while it was obvious to everyone else that he was a peasant, struggling with questions of identity and emptiness.

Vegeta sat up, clutching his head at the temples. God, am I crazy? He wondered aloud. There was no answer but the white noise of rain.


End file.
